ADS1: Leave Society

It’s hard not to believe this account, from the late Christopher Woodward, who worked for the MK Development Corporation in the 1960s and 70s. Established in 1967 on the basis of the New Towns Act, which gave the state authority to create entirely new communities, Milton Keynes was part of the government’s initiative to tackle overcrowding and housing shortages by shifting development to the periphery. Chief architect Derek Walker envisioned a new kind of society shaped by leisure and technology, in a city “greener than surrounding countryside where cars, electronic communication and nature reinvented the idea of the town-country for the 1970s.” 

Walker’s team of architects, engineers and landscape architects were all in their 20s and 30s, mostly cohabiting, listening to Pink Floyd and getting deep into “ley lines” and Neolithic structures. Walking through parts of it today, you get the feeling you’ve entered a libertarian enclave, beyond the mainstream, and away from the surveillance and restrictions of the city. Out there, you’re nearly off the grid.

Established in 1967 on the basis of the New Towns Act, which gave the state authority to create entirely new communities, Milton Keynes was part of the government’s initiative to tackle overcrowding and housing shortages by shifting development to the periphery. Of course it is here, on the edges of society, that strange new possibilities can arise. Transcending the pragmatics of housing supply, the underlying focus of Milton Keynes was the “genus loci” of the area – its ancient landmarks, topography and indigenous character. Seen from above, its urban grid resembles a net loosely cast across the landscape, augmented by historic and prehistoric layers of nature and artifice. On the other hand, walking through parts of it today, you get the feeling you’ve entered a libertarian enclave, beyond the mainstream, and away from the surveillance and restrictions of the city. Out there, you’re nearly off the grid.

The Labour government's imminent announcement of a new generation of town sites across the UK marks an opportune moment to reconsider this model of urban settlement. This year, ADS1 will look at visionary collective housing in the context of the “new town”; Milton Keynes will be our initial site of study and experimentation. The problems we face today have only compounded since the inception of Milton Keynes, and yet its success has played a part in the revival of the new town as an ideal form of urban life. With the new town as the basis of the studio, we will examine alternative models of community making, from the rural village to the urban commune. 

Pushing back against the withdrawal characteristic of contemporary culture, we ask what collective projects might break open the present and cultivate new futures. We are interested in unorthodox social arrangements and the emerging family structures they may make possible: intergenerational households, co-parenting and shared custody homes, platonic cohabitation, communal child-rearing, and intentional communities, among others. These configurations challenge dominant narratives of domesticity and raise urgent questions about how architecture can support diverse ways of living together. In our proposition to “leave society” as we know it, we will imagine others, along with new institutions, infrastructures, and cultural forms.

In our exploration of models for collective housing, we will use oral history, close observation and documentary practices transcribed and transformed through large scale physical models, photography, animation and film. We will expand our interest to land and landscapes, considering the whole and its parts simultaneously. We will explore how new settlements are situated in existing topographies; histories, prehistories, ecologies and geologies; and all sites for pioneering life. We will explore methods to both manifest domestic experience and to assert and invent new relationships and architectures for living together.

For the live project we will collaborate with dorsa, a young Zurich-based practice and friend of the studio, to adapt and misuse existing objects and systems. In February, we will travel to Le Corbusier's 1926 workers housing suburb Quatiers Modernes Frugès as well as projects by Lacaton Vassal in Bordeaux and Nantes before continuing on to Le Havre, the city rebuilt by Auguste Perret following its destruction in World War II.

In parallel with the studio there will be two school wide research seminars Lives in Common focusing on the changing spatial and social dynamics of collective living. The studio will organise a book and film club alongside this with an emphasis upon domestic realism.

The studio will predominantly be run on Tuesdays but with some Thursday sessions.

Matthew Blunderfield

Matthew is a photographer and a producer at the Architecture Foundation where he hosts the podcast Scaffold, a podcast and ongoing interview project that maps the shifting contours of contemporary architecture.

Matthew’s photography has been published in the Architects’ Journal, Superposition Magazine and the Architectural Review, and has recently featured in At Home in London: The Mansion Block, a book-length study co-published by the Architecture Foundation and MACK.

Scaffold is an ongoing interview project that maps the shifting contours of contemporary architecture. The project began independently in 2018 and became a part of the Architecture Foundation’s audio programme in 2021. With over 100 conversations recorded to date, it features emerging and established voices in the fields of architecture, art and design, and has been celebrated by Dezeen as one of the “best pieces of new architectural media.”

At the RCA Matthew teaches an M.Arch design studio with Cathy Hawley focused on establishing new frameworks of pleasure and comfort in the context of climate breakdown. He has previously taught at the Kingston School of Art and Cambridge University.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Matthew studied English Literature at the University of British Columbia and Architecture at the University of Toronto, before completing his RIBA Part III qualification from the Bartlett, UCL. He lives in London.

For more information see Matthew's website.

Cathy Hawley

ARB RIBA SFHEA is a practicing architect, a long-term associate with muf architecture/art and a founding partner at Riches Hawley Mikhail.

Throughout her career Cathy has combined practice with academic work, she currently leads ADS1 at the Royal College of Art with Matthew Blunderfield and teaches into the MArch Course at Central St Martins. Cathy is undertaking a PhD at UCA, WIP title 'Mothers making space'.

Riches Hawley Mikhail were four times Housing Design Award Winners, BD Housing architect of the Year 2009 and their Clay Field project won an RIBA Award and was mid-listed for the Stirling Prize. Goldsmith Street, a social housing development in Norwich, has been awarded the 2019 Stirling Prize.

Cathy has been the recipient of the RIBA Rome Scholarship in Architecture and subsequently a member of the British School at Rome Fine Arts Steering Committee. She has been External Examiner for MA Cities and Innovation at Central St Martins, BA Architecture at London Metropolitan University.

For more information see Cathy's website.